… but a little, three miles away at 10,678.
No measurable precipitation in Albuquerque in more than 5 weeks. It looks like today could be the fifth day this month with absolutely no clouds — that is, 100% of the possible sunshine. Nice — but I’d prefer some rain.
The whispy clouds in the photo were all gone by early afternoon. Even this morning, they were isolated to just around the mountaintops.
Along Highway 4, northwest of Albuquerque and west of Santa Fe, in the Jemez Mountains is one of the most stunning scenic views anywhere. It is Valle Grande, a part of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, described here last week in the words of Scott Momaday:
Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance. In the morning sunlight the Valle Grande was dappled with the shadows of clouds and vibrant with rolling winter grass. The clouds were always there, huge, sharply described, and shining in the pure air. But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land, and the first thing beyond, the vague misty field out of which it stood, was the floor of the valley itself, pale and blue-green, miles away. He shifted the focus of his gaze, and he could just make out the clusters of dots that were cattle grazing along the river in the faraway plain.
Maintaining that sublime view is more easily promised than done. Writing in the Santa Fe Reporter, Laura Paskus gives us an update on the National Preserve and its unique management plan. Some background from the article:
In 2000, when the federal government bought the private Baca Ranch in the Jemez Mountains for $97 million and created the Valles Caldera National Preserve, that move in and of itself was seen as a victory.
The 89,000-acre preserve sits about 50 miles from Santa Fe and spreads across a million-year-old collapsed volcanic crater, as well as grassy valleys, volcanic domes and the 11,254-foot-tall Redondo Peak. The thought of those lands finally being open to the public had elk hunters, trout fishermen, backpackers, cross country skiers and ranchers alike champing at the bit.
The preserve was set up to run like no other in the country. It was to function as a working ranch, be financially self-sufficient and managed by a nine-member trust, rather than the US Forest Service or National Park Service.
In the early days, that trust, a Clinton-appointed board, worked well with the Valles Caldera Coalition, a group of conservation, recreational and ranching groups that lobbied for the preserve’s creation and remain involved now.
“Our approach was not to be confrontational, but to work collaboratively with the board of trustees,” says Ernie Atencio, who was the coalition’s first co-ordinator from 2001 until 2003.
Those days have changed.
Link via New West Network.
The Trib has heard the scuttle, too. Around town, on Web logs and in coffee shops, people are talking about what they’ve heard is coming to the Duke City. Among them, J.Crew, Nordstrom, J.Jill and Urban Outfitters.
The first two gave The Tribune a definite and resounding no on plans to announce an Albuquerque store opening. Women’s clothier J.Jill, however, seems more promising – the customer service department says yes but couldn’t find confirming details. The company’s spokeswoman said she would not be able to confirm anything for a few weeks about the Boston store’s expansion in the West.
Urban Outfitters, which is rumored to be ready to occupy space on Central Avenue, also did not return calls for this story.
The excitement is over more Wal-Marts, Office Depots and — hold your breath — a second Bed, Bath & Beyond.
NewMexiKen loves Albuquerque, but where’s Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Panera, an Apple Store, jeez, a Kohl’s even?
The first Albuquerque Trader Joe’s opens soon.
NewMexiKen would be remiss if I didn’t point out this article from the National section of today’s New York Times:
She is more Cinderella than Cinderella Man and no one’s Million-Dollar Baby, but Monica Lovato, a slip of a super flyweight boxer at 5-foot-5 and 115 pounds, is carrying the hopes of her drug-ravaged hometown on her narrow shoulders.
Heroes have been hard to come by in Espanola, the mile-high seat of Rio Arriba County, where drug overdoses lead the nation in taunting proximity to northern New Mexico’s moneyed enclaves of Santa Fe, Taos and Los Alamos.
Ms. Lovato, 28, who has fought her way out of a tormented family history to a 4-1 record and has been known to relax by jumping out of airplanes, is as much a champion as Espanolans have cheered in some time.
Our very own “Mo cuishle.”
The article is as much about the problems — especially drug-related — in Rio Arriba county as it is about the boxer.
Key quotation: “[W]here a Rio Arriba County commissioner once protested a [drug] crackdown saying, ‘We’re not going to declare war on our own relatives.'”
… was established by President Herbert Hoover on this date in 1933.
At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert lies a mountain ringed valley called the Tularosa Basin. Rising from the heart of this basin is one of the world’s great natural wonders – the glistening white sands of New Mexico.
Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and have created the world’s largest gypsum dune field. The brilliant white dunes are ever changing: growing, cresting, then slumping, but always advancing. Slowly but relentlessly the sand, driven by strong southwest winds, covers everything in its path.
You won’t find a nicer tribute to home and to Albuquerque than the one at La Queen Sucia.
This from an article in the New York Times Magazine:
Certainly most Americans do not support higher wages out of immediate self-interest. Probably only around 3 percent of those in the work force are actually paid $5.15 or less an hour; most low-wage workers, including Wal-Mart employees, who generally start at between $6.50 and $7.50 an hour, earn more. Increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour would directly affect the wages of only about 7 percent of the work force. Nevertheless, pollsters have discovered that a hypothetical state ballot measure typically generates support of around 70 percent. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center actually put the support for raising the national minimum wage to $6.45 at 86 percent.
…It was then that the living-wage proponents hit on a scorched-earth, tactical approach. “What really got the other side was when we said, ‘It’s just immoral to pay people $5.15, they can’t live on that,’ ” Oppenheimer recalls. “It made the businesspeople furious. And we realized then that we had something there, so we said it over and over again. Forget the economic argument. This was a moral one. It made them crazy. And we knew that was our issue.”
The moral argument soon trumped all others. The possibility that a rise in the minimum wage, even a very substantial one, would create unemployment or compromise the health of the city’s small businesses was not necessarily irrelevant. Yet for many in Santa Fe, that came to be seen as an ancillary issue, one that inevitably led to fruitless discussions in which opposing sides cited conflicting studies or anecdotal evidence. Maybe all of that was beside the point, anyway. Does it – or should it – even matter what a wage increase does to a local economy, barring some kind of catastrophic change? Should an employer be allowed to pay a full-time employee $5.15 an hour, this argument went, if that’s no longer enough to live on? Is it just under our system of government? Or in the eyes of God?
The minimum wage in Santa Fe became $8.50 an hour in 2003, and $9.50 on January 1, 2006. Is it “The City Different” or a model? As the article notes, the initiative to raise the minimum wage in Albuquerque to $7.50 failed at the polls last October. The federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.
NewMexiKen’s position remains as posted previously:
The federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. It’s been $5.15 since 1997; loss of purchasing power in that time, nearly 20%. In 1997, Congressional salaries were $133,600. If the federal minimum wage was raised by the same percentage as Congressional salaries have been raised since 1997 (nearly 24% to $165,200), the federal minimum would be $6.37 an hour.
The woman who honored her own Tewa birth name Tse Tsa — Golden Dawn — by creating bright and captivating paintings died in Albuquerque at 87 on Tuesday.
Known to the world as Pablita Velarde, the Santa Clara Pueblo artist achieved international acclaim as an acutely observant traditionalist painter who managed to tell her cultural history in a variety of media even as she bent tradition to achieve her personal artistic goals.
“She really blazed a trail both for Native American and women artists by following her dream from the time she was a young girl,” said Shelby Tisdale, director of Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. “The museum has been planning an exhibition of her work for the spring featuring all her paintings from Bandelier National Monument. Now it seems more important than ever to honor her lifetime of work.”
A wonderful sampling of Pablita Velarde’s artwork is online.
Thanks to dangerousmeta for the pointer.
People who live in Silver City like to say that their town of 10,000 offers “the real New Mexico experience.” Perched on the edge of the Gila National Forest in a high-desert wonderland of ponderosas, deep gorges and red-rock mesas, Silver City is a bit rough around the edges, especially compared with places like Santa Fe and Taos – but that’s the way the locals like it. The town was founded after silver ore was discovered in 1870, and soon transplanted Yankees built the large Victorian houses that still loom over newer structures in the historic downtown. The silver industry crashed in 1893, but the town was becoming a haven for tuberculosis patients – including Billy the Kid’s mother – because of the desert air and healing hot springs. (Billy himself passed some of his youth in Silver City.) By the 1900’s, TB patients started going there en masse. After 1910, large-scale copper mining began, and that continues to be the basis of the economy, making Silver City a place where miners, artists, ranchers and extreme sports types mix easily.
Read more on spending 36 hours in Silver City from The New York Times.
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) — Was it really a mouse that burned down Luciano Mares’ house? Or was it just the wind?
Mares’ story of a flaming mouse that scampered from a burning pile of leaves into his rural home Saturday drew international media attention. Then on Monday, the 81-year-old told an Albuquerque television station that strong wind spread burning leaves, leveling his home of more than two decades.
But on Tuesday, Mares and his nephew stood by his original version that a mouse was the culprit.
“That dang mouse crawled in there,” Mares said in a telephone interview from a motel in Fort Sumner, where he is staying with his nephew. “I have an awful hate for those critters.”
Here’s the earlier NewMexiKen entry on the flaming mouse.
If it should rain or snow Sunday, as is forecast, it would be only the second time in 11 weeks that Albuquerque received precipitation. We had 9/10ths of an inch of snow a month ago. Other than that, there hasn’t been measurable precipitation since before Halloween.
If.
Update: Nothing. Zilch. Nada.
“It’s a bummer, dude, when you finally reach you destination, your chops watering, only to glance up and find that Pasta Galore has turned into Noreen’s Nail and Beauty. Or worse, an empty building as dark as the soul of Karl Rove.”
Alan Kleinfeld at New West Network in a review of a restaurant in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
… of living so close to the mountains is that I can see all the Albuquerque radio/TV transmission towers from my living room. This past weekend, with just an old 99¢ indoor bow-tie antenna, I was able to program my HDTV to get all the network stations. And in Albuquerque Comcast doesn’t even have HD feeds for CBS, WB or UPN.
I’m now thinking all I really need are the networks (for the NFL playoffs) and the several PBS feeds (for when I want to veg but still feel good about my intellectual interests). I can cut the cord (and the cable bill) — even if I will have to pay more for Internet.
Until, that is, The Sopranos return to HBO on March 12.
The Duke City Fix has the report that Albuquerque’s first Trader Joe’s is now hiring. Opening can’t be too far behind. Whoo Hoo!
(Sad isn’t it that a chain foodstore opening can get people so excited?)
I guess he’s blogging himself. At least in Santa Fe County. Bears watching.
Link via Steve Terrell.
NewMexiKen spent much of the afternoon with M. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, a superb novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. It’s my fourth complete book since Thursday.
In compelling language, Momaday tells the story of Abel, an American Indian veteran who returns home to his pueblo in 1945. In telling Abel’s story we learn also stories about Abel’s grandfather, the priest, women in Abel’s life, friends. All this takes place in Walatowa, a fictional pueblo whose geography resembles the actual Pueblo of Jemez, the surrounding mountains and canyons, and in Los Angeles among relocated Indians.
And, while the story is moving and meaningful, it is Momaday’s language that soars. Abel at Valle Grande in the Jemez Mountains (truly, in real life, one of the world’s great scenic wonders):
Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance. In the morning sunlight the Valle Grande was dappled with the shadows of clouds and vibrant with rolling winter grass. The clouds were always there, huge, sharply described, and shining in the pure air. But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land, and the first thing beyond, the vague misty field out of which it stood, was the floor of the valley itself, pale and blue-green, miles away. He shifted the focus of his gaze, and he could just make out the clusters of dots that were cattle grazing along the river in the faraway plain.
Or this, the Navajo Ben Benally remembering a snow-filled day:
And afterward, when you brought the sheep back, your grandfather had filled the barrel with snow and there was plenty of water again. But he took you to the trading post anyway, because you were little and had looked forward to it. There were people inside, a lot of them, because there was a big snow on the ground and they needed things and they wanted to stand around and smoke and talk about the weather. You were little and there was a lot to see, and all of it was new and beautiful: bright new buckets and tubs, saddles and ropes, hats and shirts and boots, a big glass case all filled with candy. Frazer was the trader’s name. He gave you a piece of hard red candy and laughed because you couldn’t make up your mind to take it at first, and you wanted it so much you didn’t know what to do. And he gave your grandfather some tobacco and brown paper. And when he had smoked, your grandfather talked to the trader for a long time and you didn’t know what they were saying and you just looked around at all the new and beautiful things. And after a while the trader put some things out on the counter, sacks of flour and sugar, a slab of salt pork, some canned goods, and a little bag full of the hard red candy. And your grandfather took off one of his rings and gave it to the trader. It was a small green stone, set carelessly in thin silver. It was new and it wasn’t worth very much, not all the trader gave for it anyway. And the trader opened one of the cans, a big can of whole tomatoes, and your grandfather sprinkled sugar on the tomatoes and the two of you ate them right there and drank bottles of sweet red soda pop. And it was getting late and you rode home in the sunset and the whole land was cold and white. And that night your grandfather hammered the strips of silver and told you stories in the firelight. And you were little and right there in the center of everything, the sacred mountains, the snow-covered mountains and the hills, the gullies and the flats, the sundown and the night, everything—where you were little, where you were and had to be.
Awesome book; simply awesome.
It’s a Sand Storm in Iraq: April 26, 2005. Incredible photos.
Link via Day of the Dead(ly) who got it from Ample Sanity.
A US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.
Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, found the mouse in his home and wanted to get rid of it.
“I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” he was quoted as saying by AP.
Though no-one was injured, the house and everything in it was destroyed.
“I’ve seen numerous house fires, but nothing as unique as this one,” Fire Department Captain Jim Lyssy said.
New Mexico has seen several major blazes after unseasonably dry and windy conditions which have destroyed 10 homes and devastated more than 53,000 acres (21,200 hectares) of land.
NewMexiKen doubts the mouse realized he had the last laugh, but I like to think he somehow knew.
According to this National Weather Service report, frighteningly dry.
November was the 9th driest of the past 111 years in New Mexico, and preliminary numbers suggest December will also go into the record books as one of the 10 driest December months of the past 111 years. When considered together, the November-December period was one of the driest 5 such periods of the past 111 years. Precipitation for this time period has averaged a mere 11 percent of normal for the state.
…Fire Danger Impacts: The wet period in 2004 and early 2005 allowed abundant grass growth over eastern New Mexico. With the recent exceptionally-dry weather, these “fine fuels” are presenting high fire danger, much higher than normal for this time of year. Unless unforeseen significant precipitation develops, the fire season in 2006 is likely to be extended and severe in New Mexico, beginning in the lower elevations this month and progressing to higher elevations in the spring to early summer.
…The most likely scenario is for continued drier than normal, and warmer than normal weather in New Mexico through the spring.
Link via John Fleck.
Upside: We can not only play winter golf, we can play it in shorts.
Downside to the upside: Greens are very, very fast.
… was admitted to the Union as the 47th state on this date 93 years ago (1912).
“Stately. Imposing. Maybe just this side of penal.”
The Albuquerque Tribune describing the architecture of Albuquerque’s oldest still in-use high school, Highland High (1949). It has a bomb shelter.
From The Albuquerque Tribune “an A to Z handbook to the well known and little-known things that make Albuquerque great.”
Pointer by the always good — and getting even better — Duke City Fix.
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of Playing With Boys and The Dirty Girls Social Club, has a blog, La Queen Sucia. (It was she who authored the review of The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, mentioned here a few weeks back.)
During the past couple of weeks, Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez has included commentary on her personal social life beginning with The Dating Game (December 21), followed by Happy Things (December 29) and yesterday, Back to the old…drawing board.” One wishes Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez more satisfying endings, but these three posts together struck NewMexiKen as a fascinating short story in real time.
Valdes-Rodriguez’s newest novel, Make Him Look Good, will be published in April.
Hey New Mexicans, think twice before you waste any water. According to a report in the Rocky Mountain News, while the snowpack is well above average in central Colorado, news is not so good for us:
Southwestern Colorado, however, has little to cheer about. Basins such as the San Miguel/Dolores and the Upper Rio Grande are alarmingly dry, with early snowpacks registering just 41 percent and 31 percent of average, respectively.
Link via Coyote Gulch.
At the New West Network, Ted Alvarez has a terrific series on New Mexico’s wonderful San Luis Valley, an area that was mistakenly made part of Colorado 150 years ago. He begins part one of “Paradise without a PR Agent” with this:
In the storied valleys of the Rocky Mountains, Aspen has the glitz and glam, Vail has an unparalleled ski valley, and Jackson has rugged class.
The San Luis Valley has an intergalactic spaceport inside of Mt. Blanca.
You’ll probably want to read about Emma’s Hacienda in the town of San Luis in part three, The Holy Grail of Mexican Fare:
Emma’s Special consists of a beef taco, a green chile enchilada, a red chile enchilada, Spanish rice, beans, and sopapillas, and each item was positively transcendent, if quite spicy. The further I got into the meal, the more my value system crumbled: With each bite, the food at Emma’s Hacienda gained ground and eventually surpassed all of my Texas benchmarks. I remain humbled to this day by the accomplishment.